[plug] SOOTYS: Internet treasure hunt.

[John Breen]

actually, funnily enough i did a unit at ecu, where the exam was (or
used to be) "find a site on the net that tells how to make a
[nuclear/chemical/conventional] bomb...

now that's the sort of exam i like....

but telling ppl how to pass, that's a good idea...

cheers,

jb

On Sun, 2002-02-24 at 14:13, Andrew Pamment wrote:
> hi there,
> 
> this is sort of off topic yet serious, but then, i forgot what the topic 
> was ages ago. umm i had an idea, kindof like an internet treasure hunt. 
> a lot of people are vaguly interested in learning a bit more about the 
> internet and networks and stuff, and it's can be pretty hard to 
> understand for those of us who arn't born geniouses.
> 
> my idea (although, it's proberly been thought of before) wouldn't be so 
> much like finding information on the internet that you learn from, but 
> the actual finding itself.
> 
> for example, most people have no idea what telnet is, or ftp let alone 
> understanding the whole idea of ports, sockets, ip addresses and such. 
> some of these people i am sure are curious, but feel put off by the 
> whole complexity of it. so they just type in www.yahoo.com and get there 
> email with absolutly no idea what is going on.
> 
> i'm not saying this would be good for learning advanced routing and 
> such, but may just be a kind of, for interest's sake thing. does that 
> make sense? people who are just curious and have a few questions but 
> can't find anyone that speaks their language to explain it to them.
> 
> a little like when you go to see the stars through a telescope, you 
> don't plan on becoming an astronomer, but you're curious.
> 
> ok, i think that makes sense, now on to the idea..
> 
> perhaps, a series of servers, say, a telnet server somewhere, a web page 
> on a non standard port, an ftp server that requires a log in.. and so 
> on, could be set up on the internet at various places, people then need 
> to go to these places to get the information on where the next step of 
> the hunt is, and some information explaining what they have just done.
> 
> this is just an idea i came up with this morning, so please feel free to 
> tell me how crap it is, but if anyone has any comments or suggestions 
> i'd like to hear them.
> 
> i had further ideas, like a telnet (proberly a fake type of shell login 
> for security's sake) that allowed you to run a (fake again) traceroute 
> to a fixed site, you then have to go to a certain server, say number 
> five on the list, which went on to explain what traceroute just did, 
> what ICMP is, a world that most people don't even know exist.
> 
> I think something like this, an easy, and fun (so it doesn't put people 
> off) way of understanding the basic principles of the internet and how 
> it works, may possibly be a good way of raising awareness for basic good 
> security practices, like what a firewall is, why you should have one.
> 
> in a way a bit like sex education as well. most people i believe think 
> their win98 machine is in their home and not vunerable on the internet, 
> like somehow they're on the internet but not part of it.
> 
> i don't know if it could tie in with linux.conf.au 2003, seems that's 
> really for professionals, but perhaps, it could be a good way of getting 
> the general public curious about the whole thing, and maybe even get 
> some people interested in the internet, networks and linux that would 
> not have usually gotten interested.
> 
> does this sound like a good idea to anyone other than me?
> 
> andrew
> 
> -- 
> If you want to know what God thinks of money,
>     just look at those he gives it to.
> 
>